If all my friends jumped off the Empire State Building, Yes, I would too.

Apr 12, 2009

Creative aging.

When I was a kid, my mother gradually developed diminished hearing in one of her ears.

She said it was the best thing that had ever happened to her, and gleefully pointed her deaf ear at anyone she didn't feel like listening to. It was indicative of her personality for sure, but I'd imagine teaching first grade for 30 years made her appreciate quiet when she heard it.

My father had the same joyful reaction to losing his sense of smell as he got older. As a life-long New Yorker, this I understood immediately.

As my mother's hearing in her (left i think) ear worsened, she would often

mishear things in peculiar ways. Most memorable to me was a public service annoucement that New York City ran in the late 70s encouraging people to put their garbage in garbage bags (as opposed to piling their refuse in the cans, attracting all manner of wildlife --->>). I don't remember most of the song, but the chorus was the repeated words "bag it, bag it", prompting my mother to run in all offended at the insulting language and to yell at me for listening to such things.

Imagine my sense of nostalgia today as we drove home from our luxurious weekend in Danbury CT (yes, really), and Kanye West's "Amazing" came on the radio, and I turned to my husband to say .. "Ok, so I know he can't really be singing about raisins, can he?". (At another point, it sounded like "Raisinettes" too).

I can only imagine this is going to get worse.

I didn't mind the song per se, but it sounded like he was singing Karaoke, rather than a song, (the vocal track sounded completely disconnected from the music - DH's observation)

On a completely different note, today I discovered yet another difference between living in the suburbs (as I have for the last year and a half), and NYC where i spent the preceding 40 1/2 years. Living in Brooklyn for that many years, you grow used to hearing people scream at sporting events. You can hear them from blocks away. When the Rangers finally won the Stanley Cup after 54 years, people were going to their windows in between periods and bellowing random gutteral sounds out the window.

Here in Westchester, they scream at golf.

on television.

Really.

I'm not kidding

I came home from my weekend away to hear someone screaming "Attaboy Tiger" from behind their closed door.